Mental retreat

Published 25 March 1995

From Tom Hulse

The article celebrating E. M. Forster worries that reality has begun to resemble his vision of a time when we physically retreat from both the outside world and direct experience into a world of individual isolationism and secondhand reinterpretation (Forum, 25 February). The truth is more subtle.

Two weeks ago, I had the dubious pleasure of attending a ski racing school which was also attended by two cellular telephone salesmen. One, an aggressive type, was continually bellowing at underlings on a conventional cellular handset. The other had somehow wired himself in a manner which allowed him to communicate using equipment which was completely invisible to the observer.

Although both were competent skiers, neither were truly present. In their own minds, they were not on a mountain, they were in an office. For all the mountain touched them, they may as well have been on exercise bikes in one of Forster’s windowless cubicles.

Here is the difference between the 1990s and Forster’s vision; rather than retreat physically from the world we are retreating mentally from it. The danger lies not in virtual reality, but in reality becoming, to us, virtual.